On right turns

Have you ever wondered how it came about that in most places a right turn on a red light is now the law of the land? Here’s how it happened. But please, please, please, dear reader, take this as satire, every word of it! It’s all meant in left-wing fun.

Fellow Americans! Big Brother in Washington has once again, and for the last time, insisted that in order to receive our next batch of federal energy handouts, we the sovereign people of the State of Connecticut and of our sister Commonwealth of Massachusetts must pass so-called energy-saving legislation permitting a right-hand turn on a red light. Do you realize what this means?

Think of it! One of the cornerstones of our Democracy (“rule by the people”) from the earliest town meetings all the way up to our present day has been that the Federal Government does not interfere in matters properly belonging to the states. Already the last few years have shown the worst erosion of this sacred principle in such matters as so-called “civil rights” cases, education of our children, and the housing of our families, all of which have come under the federal eye. And now what? Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say that the right of a state to regulate its own local traffic has been taken away from us? Is this some new amendment the liberals in Congress have slipped by us unawares?

And for what? To save energy? It saves no energy to run that red light and narrowly avoid an unsighted person and their seeing eye dog, an animal (God bless them) specially trained to cross on red. Or to enter the crossflow of traffic and force it to slow down for you and then to start up again. In any case, the way to save energy is not the way the peacenik radicals in Congress tell us to. They would have our whole society cave in to the greedy Arabs. What we should be doing, instead of passing silly little “energy-saving” laws, is take over the oilfields. That’ll save some energy!

But, fellow citizens, and Christians, beware. There is something yet more sinister about this affair than meets the eye. And it has nothing to do with energy at all. That is merely the guise in which the serpent appears. It has to do with the sacred principle of Authority. At stake in this issue is one more instance of the Big Lie. The Communists in Congress are trying to spread all throughout the country the treasonous notion that red is not red!!!

Remember Animal Farm? George Orwell said it all right there. Now everyone knows the Federal Government has been infiltrated by Communists since FDR met “Comrade” Stalin at Yalta. If they can get our young children to go on red, the color will lose all meaning. It will be the last step towards anarchy. It was reported during the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, after all, that they changed the traffic lights in Peiping to mean “advance” on red. Is that what we want here?

What can I tell my six-year-old child who cries out to me in fear, “Daddy, you’re going through a red light!” Must I tell her it is her own government that wants us to flaunt reason, the color scheme, Authority and the Constitution? To endanger human lives? To bow down to Arabs? Must we resort to civil disobedience, the very tactic of our enemies, to protest this violation?

We citizens of Connecticut and Massachusetts, the last two remaining free states, have an awesome responsibility before us. Nothing less than the sacred duty to save our nation from being swept up by the menace of Big Government and its Big Lies. If you, dear reader, do nothing about this insidious threat to our American Way of Life, the law will pass and the State will reign supreme, ruling over all our lives as if it were God Almighty. Future generations will demand to know what part you played in this historic turning point of our civilization as we know it.

CONTRIBUTOR

Eric A. Gordon is the author of a biography of radical American composer Marc Blitzstein, co-author of composer Earl Robinson’s autobiography, and the translator (from Portuguese) of a memoir by Brazilian author Hadasa Cytrynowicz. He holds a doctorate in history from Tulane University. He chaired the Southern California chapter of the National Writers Union, Local 1981 UAW (AFL-CIO) for two terms and is director emeritus of The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring Southern California District. In 2015 he produced “City of the Future,” a CD of Soviet Yiddish songs by Samuel Polonski.